Dubai’s Armani Hotel at the Burj Khalifa Will Try to Open April 21

On March 18, the world’s first Armani Hotel in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower did not open as planned. Instead, like with every ambitious hotel and construction project that suffers from its own hype, it was delayed for a later spring opening. And now we finally have a date…we hope.

Burj Khalifa

The Chicago Tribune‘s Cityscapes blog discovers that Emaar Properties—the folks behind the tower—are now planning for an April 21 opening of the five-star hotel, whose 160 rooms take up ten stories of the tower’s lower section.

If you want to see the sights from the very top at their 124th-story observation deck, it would be wise to make secondary plans. The observation deck closed just after opening in January when electrical problems trapped visitors in an elevator. Although the observation deck has just reopened, who knows how long that’ll be the case.

Also buried in the Tribune story is an interesting bit: “Smith [the lead designer of the tower] now has his own firm, which reportedly has won a competition to design an even taller tower–at least one kilometer high–in Saudi Arabia.” Won’t that be fun.